1971 Tape Adds to Debate Over Kerry's Medal Protest

By JIM RUTENBERG and JAMES DAO; Jodi Wilgoren contributed reporting for this article.

Published: April 26, 2004

Throughout much of his political career, Senator John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, has faced questions about a singular event that took place 33 years ago last week: he and fellow veterans discarded medals in Washington to protest the war in Vietnam.

The Kerry campaign Web site says it is ''right-wing fiction'' that he ''threw away his medals during a Vietnam War protest.''

Rather, the Web site says, ''John Kerry threw away his ribbons and the medals of two veterans who could not attend the event.''

But the issue is not so cut and dried. A television interview Mr. Kerry gave in November 1971 shows that Mr. Kerry himself fed the confusion from early on. The New York Times obtained a videotape of the interview late last week.

The interview was shown on the Washington television station WRC, archived by President Richard M. Nixon's communications office and held by the National Archives.

On the program, an interviewer asked Mr. Kerry to explain what was happening in a photograph of a man hurling a medal, apparently during a protest. Mr. Kerry responded that the veterans had decided that the best way to ''wake the country up'' about the war was to ''renounce the symbols which this country gives, which supposedly reinforces all the things that they have done, and that was the medals themselves.''

''And so they decided to give them back to their country,'' he added.

Mr. Kerry said they had decided to do so as ''a last resort.''

When the interviewer asked, ''How many did you give back, John?'' he answered, ''I gave back, I can't remember, six, seven, eight, nine.''

When the interviewer pointed out that Mr. Kerry had won the Bronze and Silver Stars and three Purple Hearts, Mr. Kerry added, ''Well, and above that, I gave back my others.''

The ceremonial discarding of the combat medals came at the end of nearly a weeklong demonstration that Mr. Kerry had helped organize as a member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

Republicans, nervous about questions regarding President Bush's Air National Guard service, have raised the issue to revive accusations by some veterans that the discarding of medals dishonored those who served and died in the war. At the same time, the Republicans have said that Mr. Kerry's explanation of what happened at the ceremony is an example of his proclivity to fall on both sides of every issue.

The protest came up last week, the 33rd anniversary of the ceremony, in articles about Mr. Kerry's Vietnam protest days in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times.

In The Los Angeles Times article, Mr. Kerry was quoted as saying that he never meant to imply that the two medals he had discarded belonged to him. He said they belonged to two men who could not attend the ceremony.

''I never ever implied that I did it,'' Mr. Kerry is quoted as saying, adding, ''You know what? Medals and ribbons, there's almost no difference in distinction, fundamentally. They're symbols of the same thing. They are what they are.''

Campaign aides to Mr. Kerry said Sunday that comments he had made in the 1971 interview -- using the words medals and ribbons interchangeably -- were consistent with what he says today.

''John Kerry and thousands of veterans had the courage to lead an act of patriotic dissent by fighting to end a failed war and using their military decorations as symbols of their opposition,'' said David Wade, a spokesman for Mr. Kerry.

''John Kerry is proud that in those difficult days, this act to capture the attention of the country helped save lives,'' Mr. Wade added.

Mr. Kerry, who is from Massachusetts, spent much of Sunday in Iowa, where he fired back at what he called misleading and distorting television advertisements being run against him by Mr. Bush.

''This race is not about attack ads,'' Mr. Kerry told a friendly crowd of more than 1,000 people at Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Des Moines. ''It's not about the destruction of personality.''

Later, saying the Bush campaign has ''a truth deficit,'' Mr. Kerry added, ''If they want to argue about the merits, let's argue about the merits.''

He also had harsh words for the administration's refusal to release photographs of the flag-draped coffins of American soldiers who had died in Iraq.

''We shouldn't hide that from America,'' Mr. Kerry said.

''I believe that keeping faith with those who serve also requires us to understand the sacrifice they're making,'' he added, noting that ''12 sons'' of Iowa were among those killed in action.

''If they're good enough to go and fight and die,'' he said, ''they're good enough to come home with full honors in America.''